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Link Building Survey 2013 - The Results [INFOGRAPHIC]

This post was originally in YouMoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community.The author’s views are entirely his or her own and may not
reflect the views of Moz.

Many of us faced a challenging 2012 and 2013 has been no different. Rankings were won and lost, a lot of bad links were removed and quite frankly a lot of businesses and departments had to be re-designed. We all know it’s a pretty “interesting” time to be in the link-building and SEO space.

Since we are now over half way through 2013 we decided it was time to gain a better understanding of how this year is going for those in the industry. The purpose of the survey was to really capture the current market sentiment and better understand how industry peers are faring.

We produced an infographic from the results (embedded in its full form at the end of this post) but I also wanted to write up an analysis here just for Moz readers simply because I feel there are quite a few interesting bits of data that are well worth discussing.

Before we get into it, a quick disclaimer:

This post is for information purposes only. These results are not intended to steer you towards specific linking tactics. Surveys have certain inherent flaws and in a market like ours where perception and reality can sometimes become disconnected the data certainly isn’t going to be perfect.

You should make business decisions based on your own experiences and data or hire a professional who is able to assist in doing so.

Adding a disclaimer might seem a little officious, but I do see it as my responsibility to add some fair warnings in here. People coming back to me in 6 month's time saying “Your survey said paid links were widely used… why don’t I rank anymore?!”… can’t say they were not warned.

This is not a black hat vs. grey hat vs. white hat thing by the way; we’re all pretty much in the same boat floating on an ocean owned by someone else [Google]. My point is there are too many individuals in my opinion being given access to large audiences online who go on to author arguably flippant remarks and tenuous “facts” that get passed off as gospel. This kind of behavior likely sets many beginners or even intermediate SEOs down the wrong path or one they really don’t understand.

Now that’s out of the way, let’s get started…

Who took the survey?

I found this information interesting, not just because it helps us better understand some of the answers given later on in the survey, but because we get the chance to see how people really “label” themselves in the industry.

In our industry I guess we do spend quite a bit of time labeling ourselves or attempting to define our role within a business, but the real aim here was to see how many people called themselves a link builder with a view to observing any declines in future surveys of this kind.

As was noted in the infographic, it is great we got such a good spread of individuals answering questions as it helps to give perspective from across the organisation.

How much does your business or agency spend on link building on a monthly basis?

I was personally really looking forward to seeing the results of this particular question because I think it acts as a better barometer than most things, as to the effectiveness of link building.

By and large, people won’t continue to pour money into something that isn’t working. Businesses often vote with their wallet so to speak.

Granted, money related questions in surveys aren’t without bias because certain individuals will almost certainly inflate their figures almost instinctively.

You will note that nearly 39% of those who responded work within an organisation that spends between $5-50k+ a month on linking initiatives. That’s a decent sized budget and while obviously there will be respondents who work at an agency where this is distributed across a number of client projects, it does mean there are a number of businesses out there spending big bucks in an attempt to proactively and passively acquire links. Which as I said, means not only does that demonstrate the continued effectiveness of links as part of SEO but that the budget is justified, i.e. they can see an ROI.

The expression goes that a fool and his money are easily parted and frankly any business that can afford say $30k to invest into link building programmes is unlikely to be a fool. They are going to be seeing a return. Say what you want about other things, but links are still the dominant signal to Google and that doesn’t really look set to change.

What are some of the biggest challenges that you face in link building?

Based on the results of this question we found the five biggest challenges that anyone who does link building faces.

Here I’d like to offer up some actionable advice for each specific challenge, looking at some of the ways we internally overcome these challenges and linking out to some great resources that are out there.

As I mentioned earlier in this post; many businesses and departments have been forced into almost entirely re-inventing themselves and their internal processes, so understandably this is one of the key challenges faced currently.

This is really a blog post all in itself, but here are a few resources that you may find useful...

Never an easy thing. As the link building market swells and as outreach-dependent linking continues to surge in popularity there are naturally going to be more people out there playing the field, which can mean that certain sites are:

Propositioning - think about why these people want to link to you. I’m not going to go all “create great content” on your ass, but you are essentially making a sale here so if you’re not floating their boat you need to rethink your approach.

Diving deeper - this may sound like a prospecting tip, but if you can seek out sites which aren’t getting hit with hundreds if not thousands of emails daily, you stand a much better shot of getting a response.

I am a firm believer that there is no set one-size-fits-all approach to anchor text ratios. What works for some sites and in some verticals would get your burned before the week is out in other markets.

So my takeaway for this would be to talk in terms that are relative to your market and the type of project you are working on.

There are some great services/tools out there that can help you to audit your backlinks and proactively manage the risk of future linking campaigns. This information is just a few mouse clicks away and whilst you probably shouldn’t rely solely on the judgment of a tool, it can cut down tremendously on the legwork and even guesswork that goes into determining which links are helpful and which are harmful in your profile.

A tool like LinkRisk allows you to spot the harmful links but also help you identify the really strong ones as a result of your link prospecting efforts.

What are the most common forms of link building?

I have to say that this one didn’t really deliver too many surprises. 2012/2013 has seen a meteoric increase in guest blogging activities which tells you a few things really; they are effective when done well and you almost certainly need to be diversifying your stable of tactics, because if we’ve all noticed an increase in guest posts I think it will be safe to say Google has as well.

5% of respondents admitted to participating in paid linking. I was quite surprised that even this many people admitted to it and I congratulate their honesty, because I guarantee that the number is higher than this :-) .

What are the 5 most effective link building tactics?

We asked respondents to rate a wide range of linking tactics on a scale of 1-5. 1 being potentially damaging all the way through to 5 being extremely effective. We then organised these into a top 5 of tactics based on the average rating that these received:

Author bio vs. in-content?

A common question we come up against relates to the effectiveness of guest posts where the link is in the author bio vs. placed within the body of the content.

We have seen no evidence to suggest one is more effective than the other and we recommend a combination of the two simply because placing a strict restriction, like in-content, only can limit some strong publishers for example.

Here is how our respondents feel about this subject:

Infographic directory vs. targeted blog?

Similarly we wanted to get a feel for the general market consensus as to the effectiveness of gaining a placement of an infographic on a blog versus getting loads of placements on infographic galleries/directories.

We have found placements of infographics on targeted, top-tier publishers to be a highly effective method for enhancing search engine visibility I would also argue that some of the better quality infographic galleries are a worthwhile link to secure.

I am talking about the ones that maintain some kind of editorial review process. We have seen on numerous occasions, an infographic being picked up by other sites as a result of the seed placement on one of the higher end infographic galleries.

Here’s what our respondents thought...

What are the 5 least effective link building tactics?

As you might expect we then rounded up the data from the previous question to give us the “relegation zone” in the league table of linking or the tactics that were considered least effective by our respondents based on their average rating.

I won’t comment on the effectiveness of any individual tactics personally here, but I will say that in certain markets and with certain types of sites these tactics are still working. While we should strive to do better forms of link building undoubtedly (if we want to mature as an industry and get a seat at the big table), we do have to be mindful of what is actively working and look at how we can learn from that.

Which tactics do link builders consider dangerous?

I have to say there are probably other linking tactics that I would consider dangerous and perhaps even more dangerous... but here is how our respondents answered this question:

My immediate reaction to these results was that there was likely a little bit of confirmation bias going on. You are likely to have seen the fairly recent events involving a UK florist and their insatiable appetite for advertorials (whether it was advertorials that caused the spanking or not, this was inferred as the cause everywhere) as well as Google’s relatively public smashing of some blog networks. It isn’t beyond the realms of possibility to argue that some respondents will have taken on board these big industry events and even if just subconsciously they will be finding evidence in their day to day work that these tactics are indeed dangerous.

In reality, it really does come down to how you execute. Any kind of linking tactic comes with risk when not done well.

Fear, uncertainty and doubt are growing problems for link builders

11% said that they weren’t sure which links were going to harm or help them which would corroborate the notion that this is one of the biggest challenges faced by link builders presently but the data from the survey would suggest that for some, the last 12 months has driven them to analysis-paralysis. So much uncertainty, fear and doubt that close to 5% aren’t planning on doing any link building at all.

As I’ve said before, we’re all trying to make our way in Google’s ocean and if you’re not rowing, but your competitors are... standing still starts to look just as risky as being proactive.

What about the next 12 months?

It is clear that the outreach-dependent forms of link building are going to be taking priority for the next 12 months and beyond with respondents planning to focus investment in tactics including guest blogging, digital PR, infographics and building relationships with webmasters.

I find that last one particularly interesting because I think many of us are waking up to the idea that links (certainly some of your links anyway) can drive a good amount of traffic on an ongoing basis. If there is a website that already has an audience (and the trust of that audience) why wouldn’t you explore ways of working with them and developing that relationship? That’s a ready-made set of prospective customers...

And here it is in full format:

I welcome your thoughts and feedback on the data - I will try to respond to all comments promptly.
Please also feel free to suggest questions for inclusion in next year’s survey.

About JamesAgate —
James Agate is the founder of Skyrocket - a digital services provider.

I've been talking to a few people here at MozCon who have said that they are worried broken link building is going to go the way of guest blogging in the sense that everyone is jumping on it and suddenly people will be fighting for opportunities and webmasters are going to get sick of hearing from anyone in the industry...

Guess the helpfulness and knowledge share in our industry is both a blessing and a curse :-)

I think we are more likely with broken link building to end up impacting the RoI of the technique unlike guest posting which is more likely to draw Google's ire for anchor text manipulation. We will be scrambling for fewer and fewer opportunities over time but there is enough churn to make it a long term strategy for those who are committed.

I think that ROI will stick around until 404 links get harder to find. Overall, this seems like an awesome thing for the internet as a whole. Also, I'm not too worried about anchors either as webmasters will police them to some extent.

Any link building method can be abused. The effectiveness is up to you based on how much time you want to spend on it. Unfortunately, there are spammers but clearly Google is trying to take care of them. To those people performing real guest blogging on legitimate sites, these sites continue to succeed. FWIW, real guest blogging will never actually die.

There's even perfectly legitimate link pages and directories out there...

I don't disagree at all. The problem in my estimation is really just manipulated anchor text. You can't fill your guest blog posts with links that have commercial anchors and not expect Google to respond. But, if you actually write a good post and merely cite your website with its brand identity, you will likely pass any algo tests for a long time.

I 100% agree with that, thank you for clarifying what you meant. Feels like link building for the last couple years is more about getting links from natural sites with natural anchor text as opposed to optimized copy, DA, PR, etc.

Agreed, and Google are well aware, checkout this comment from a recent interview with Matt Cutts:

"If people just move away from doing article banks or article directories or article marketing to guest blogging and they don’t raise their quality thresholds for the content, then that can cause problems."

Excellent and very detailed infographics. Biggest thing that the SEOs must do is understand why its all about earning organic links and not about building links which more often than not is manipulative or spam. SEO should be and is more than for a user than the search engine.

Fantastic infographic and write up, James! I love the data and the disclaimer at the top of this needs to be emphasized that while this information is industry trend, it's not necessarily what's best. Some of these tactics can be downright useless depending on your company and goals.

With that said, we're at Mozcon right now and what you have here is very similar to what's being taught. Links and the fundamentals of SEO (like title tags) are still the most important part of ranking well and the link building methods you've mentioned are solid.

Fantastic post, James. Particularly liked your comment - "In reality, it really does come down to how you execute. Any kind of linking tactic comes with risk when not done well."

I couldn't agree more with that. I think that the majority of link building tactics that get penalised aren't actually down to the specific method itself, i.e. guest posting, private networks, link exchanges, etc - it is often due to how they're done. Like many of us within the industry, we can see these tactics work on a regular basis and will continue to do so. Link diversity is what people should be focusing on. Driving through links from a multitude of different sources and ensuring that you have a natural backlink profile (or in most cases, a link profile that looks 'natural') should keep you on the right track.

Having said all of this, my main strategy is through sustained content marketing campaigns - these often yield several link building opportunities that 'find us' instead of having to search for them.

I agree with this. Your comment here actually reminds me of an article I read, written by you about building links to a travel blog you and your gf were working on. I just checked that blog out while writing this and it looks like it's coming along!

I'm surprised to see anchor text distribution score so low, as I've seen some agencies and in-house folk still get it so horribly wrong even this late after the introduction of Penguin. That said, you asked people to score their "biggest challenge," so maybe it's just a case that something else is more a priority for them, and that anchor text distribution is still important to them, but it just ranks 2nd or 3rd. Interesting!

Isn't the "how much do you spend" question a little vague? A free-lance linkbuilder obviously doesn't have the budget as a big ageceny. Wouldn't a question like "how much percent of your budget" yield more insight?

Very useful blog / infographic nonetheless! And, the infographic is very well designed :).

Hi Martijn, I'll take that on board for next time I do the survey actually. Seems a good way to evolve that question and will probably warrant some insights. I think the how much do you spend question is still important though because I find it interesting to see the range of budgets.

On another note, I don't think broken link building will die, because any webmaster is going to appreciate someone telling them about a broken link. I know I am kind of obsessed with making sure all my links work solely because I am so concerned about user experience. However, I can see the spammers reaching out and trying to replace a link that has no relevancy... I guess that could get annoying...

Hell of inforgraphic, very interesting. I'm surprised broken link building was thought of so highly, but I suppose it makes sense on reflection, just wasn't expecting it. Crazy how dominating guest posting is.

When looking at the five biggest problems, all I could think was "yip, that's about right" - especially getting people to respond. Maybe I just need to be better at emailing folks... :)

Phillip, broken link building works so well because you're fixing the link on an existing, aged page with some established PA (page authority). Guest blogging is amazing and works great and while it has it's initial value, some of the best value comes after the guest post has some PA instead of relying just on DA.

great post, man! i'm actually surprised 'finding link prospects' is a significant problem for link builders.. I would personally like to know if that is vertical specific, a resources issue, laziness, etc..

I assume people are just struggling to find low hanging fruit or easy link prospects. People want quality sites that are quick and easy to get links on... something that doesn't really exist. You actually gotta do some work to make the connection and get the link.

Thanks Jame for sharing this valuable data.During this year 2013,more and more online content writers will begin to use Google+ beacause GOOGLE AUTHORSHIP plays very impotant roll nowadays.search engines favour mobile friendly sites more know.get more links is not important now instead of that get links from quality or reputed sites are become more useful and effective tachnique.

Thanks James for this very useful survey. I guess we are right in the middle of a dilemma with guest blogging. Everybody seems to agree about the effectiveness TODAY but everybody seems to wonder how Google will take to react on this massive content invasion!

I have seen the time when there were a specific category who used to do guest blogging, as the google changed its link evaluation algo the guest blogging has flooded with new bloggers. Since the back links are not going to loose its charms hence the new horizons.

Nice post with some great information to reap and knowledge to gain. Thanks for posting.

Really interesting infographic! The most surprising part for me is how much digital PR is apparently going to grow. It's interesting to see traditional PR agencies all suddenly deciding they can do SEO because of the relationships they have. I don't think the same agency for both is the right move, but I feel that at the moment they're too far apart.

I read your article twice and i admire your research. Its valuable yet effective. But i have some doubts. I don't think Building Relationships with Webmasters is an effective way any more. As i am experiencing reciprocal link exchange or 3 ways link exchange has almost shutdown and not counted as an effective SEO Off Activity anymore then what does it mean when you are saying about the effectiveness of webmasters Link building is of 29%..

Excellent post, I love it.. This survey shows that if you want to enhance your site over Google search engines then you should these following steps then you generate reputation otherwise you go back in stone age.

Great post, but i still have confused about 1 how to find the effective links 2 What are the most common forms of link building? but why there is no social media.Does social media can not to put as links？

Hi. Thats really great stuff. Every one tells us deep stuff but nobody telling the what kind of link building techniques do we need to follow i mean the manual submissions. Pls reply what we need to do ?

Hi James! I firmly believe that there are some great tools that can help us audit our backlinks and aggressively manage the risk of future linking campaigns. I actually like this tool, LinkRisk because it allows us to spot the harmful link but also helps us identify the really strong ones as a result of our link prospecting efforts.

Very interesting statistics, I was very surprised to see that in 5 most effective link building tactics broken link building got highest score. Even though in case of SMBs its very difficult to implement. I completely agrees that infographics/interactive graphics will play a greater role in coming years. Soon Author bio will be ignored by Google, recently Matt Cutts gave a hint in one of his video.

Great post mate. I have one curious question - previously article submission or directory submission etc was useful but now due to overuse and misuse of those platforms we have to change to new technologies like you mentioned. Now, say after 2 years from now again for overuse or misuse of these technologies these techniques can be no more useful. What is the solution? or i am missing something.

Thanks for reading. Do you mean "is this need for new techniques going to continue to be a cycle?"... if so, then the answer is both yes and no. If you attempt things the wrong way then yes probably you will face the need to be switching to the new thing all the time.

Being smart about your techniques, evolving those techniques and building diversity into your profile should see you through for a relatively long (but impossible to define) length of time.

A growing fear of link building makes perfect sense in the wake of Penguin . Site owners are second guessing the way they used to do things and are concerned that one misstep will bring everything crashing down around your ears. It's nerve wracking to be triple checking every link you've ever built, trying to determine if it's hurting, helping, or just existing.

I plan for this to be an annual survey and this should make it more interesting year-on-year as we can make some comparisons, plus I've had quite a bit of feedback so lots of ideas for questions to ask people next year.

Great Post James. I agree with you assessment of dangerous link results. I still see plenty of sites with these type links manipulating their profiles all over the first page of the SERPs, especially at the local level. There is obviously a higher tolerance there, and some grading on curve per industry.

I also found it quite amusing that guest blogging was in the most effective, least effective, and most dangerous results. I know it is a quality reference, but still ironic just the same

Hi David, thanks for reading. Just to clarify, guest blogging appeared in "most used" and "most effective" but not in the other two. Although it wouldn't surprise me, as an industry opinions will always be divided.

Depends what client you have worked on and what markets, I have worked on plenty of Enterprise level project where we have not purchased links. We have just used out internal links to manually build quality links, do outreach and use existing brand material.

Thanks James!!!... for sharing this Amazingly described and executed infograph. I think if Guest blogging done properly with the intention of sharing content and not the link juice from the post will definitely achieve success.

I am still a bit of confused in Reciprocal link exchange, is it still effective to do.

Some interesting answers/percentages here, James! We've abused so many techniques in the name of SEO and cried a river when things didn't work anymore, and now it turns out that we're repeating ourselves with guest blogging. It's like we get addicted to easy + shiny new stuff, and forget about old methods until someone at Search Engine Land writes about one of them. It's quite shocking that most respondants see directory submissions as the most potentially damaging link building tactic with so many excellent directories out there! I would say that it's not about the tactic themselves but how they are executed.

By the way, the links to 'Link building using Google Search' and to 'Link opportunities for B2B companies' seem to be mixed up.

I'm Sebasiten, a community manager in loi-duflot.fr (France), and I work everyday on that topic. I found this results really interesting because I didn't imagine that, for example, a representative part of the population (5%) chose not to build any links, when we all know that is really important and effective for your website ranking on Google.

I'd also like to add that there is (for me!) 2 others common forms of link building : comments on forums and press release publication.

I have one more comment here. Maybe more a question ; how many backlinks are effective to improve your website ranking score ? and is quality more effective than quantity ?

Well i am amazed with the results, i thought that Digital pr also died with the death of link wheels, blog networks, article submission and advertorials .

But the most important thing that Triggered me is Broken link building. It is still alive and the most effective tactic to build links according to survey. And the second one is guest blogging. I have read in many authoritative blogs that guest blogging is going to be considered a spammy tactic as authors are creating spammy and thin content. But still it's the major tactic to build links. Amazing and it simply proves that content is the main thing.